


Crushed Little Stars

by poppunkpadfoot



Series: a body from the balcony [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Community: HPFT, First War with Voldemort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 12:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppunkpadfoot/pseuds/poppunkpadfoot
Summary: On weekends, Sirius goes to see Iain.A sequel to Hitting the GroundFor Crimson Quill's Picspam Challenge on HPFT





	Crushed Little Stars

**Author's Note:**

>   
  


On weekends, Sirius goes to see Iain. It’s not the same day every week - Order meetings are not regularly scheduled, so as to throw off the Death Eaters as much as possible, and therefore nothing else in his life is regularly scheduled either. But it doesn’t seem to matter much to Iain _when_ he shows up, as long as he _does_ show up.

He knows, in the logical parts of his brain, that it’s not fair, what he’s doing. Iain deserves someone who he can see more often, someone who can actually let him in, and who isn’t a fucking coward about the whole thing. About him. But the logical part of his brain has always been first to fold, and he has always been selfish. He keeps showing up, and Iain keeps letting him in.

“Can I ask you something?” Iain asks, in the wee hours of one warm Sunday morning.

“I can’t promise I’ll answer,” Sirius responds truthfully. “But you can ask.”

“Mhh.” Iain is tracing one finger up and down Sirius’s bare chest. They’re tangled together under Iain’s sheets, and the lamp on the bedside table is the only thing lighting up the room. “Where are you all week? When you’re not here?”

_Fighting a war_, Sirius thinks, and has to bite back a hysterical bark of laughter.

“At home, mostly,” he says instead, which is at least part of the truth. He can’t exactly say, ‘Well, I spend about half my time skulking around alleyways, spying on Death Eaters.’ “I mean, I work from home, so.”

He doesn’t really need to work - when Alphard died, he left him set up for life - but he does need something to do, something to think about, that isn’t a question of life and death. Translation work doesn’t have to be as difficult as he makes it - technically, all he needs to do is cast a translation spell and then check for errors - but he prefers to do it manually. He bought a typewriter for twenty quid at a Muggle thrift store, and he does through his assignments word-by-word. It can be tedious, and he has always hated tedium, but he finds the work oddly comforting. In any case, it keeps his mind off things.

“Oh?” says Iain, and props himself up on his elbows. “And what is it that you do?”

“I translate things from English to French,” he says vaguely. “Freelance, just whatever gets sent my way. Mostly instruction manuals, things like that.”

“You speak French?”

“_Oui, couramment._”

“That’s kind of sexy,” Iain smirks, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“_Je peux me faire plus._” He tries to say it seriously, but his lips are twitching.

“If you keep it up, we’re going to have to go again,” Iain says; he, too, is fighting back a smile.

“_Quelle tragédie_,” Sirius hums, and kisses him.

It’s after the second time that Iain asks him whether he wants to stay the night. He always asks, although Sirius usually declines and goes home (albeit with much more grace and dignity than that very first time.) Right then, though, he’s far too boneless - and far too tired - to even want to think about moving.

“I’ll stay,” he mumbles, “if that’s-”

“It’s fine,” Iain interrupts, his voice warm; then he pulls the comforter up over Sirius’s shoulders, and Sirius’s heart does this weird hop-skip-jump in his chest that at any other time probably would have sent him spiralling in a panic.

Luckily, he’s also too tired to panic. He falls asleep within a few minutes, and sleeps through the night for the first time in weeks.

When he wakes the next morning, Iain is gone, which is an unexpected twist. He quickly finds a note, though, when he gets up to get dressed. “Sorry to duck out on you!” it says, in large but tidy handwriting. “Had to run to work. You looked really tired last night, so I didn’t want to wake you. You can help yourself to tea or coffee or whatever, and then just lock the door after you whenever you leave.”

Underneath the note is a key.

He picks it up and stares at it. The label on the keychain says “spare key”, which makes sense - it would be a bit odd if Iain left him his own key - but then, if he’s supposed to take this to lock the door with, what’s he supposed to do with it after? Leave it in the mailbox? Or… or keep it? Return it next time? ...Use it next time?

The note doesn’t specify.

“Shit,” Sirius sighs, and sits back down on the bed.

He spends far too long sitting there, staring at the key, trying to decide what to do. It seems like the sort of thing that should be easy, but Merlin knows he loves to make easy things complicated.

In the end, he decides the safest thing to do is to return the key next weekend. Only then does he finally finish getting dressed and go home.

At home, there’s a package sitting on his kitchen table. The owl that delivered it is nowhere in sight; he’s lucky, he supposes, that it hadn’t come to find him at Iain’s when it hadn’t found him at home. Leaving a window open, though, that had been careless. An unplanned opening messes with protection spells, leaves his flat vulnerable to attack. He’s going to get himself killed if he keeps making sloppy mistakes.

The package, for its part, is just a new assignment, although it’s a more interesting one than usual: an advanced astronomy textbook, for use at Beauxbatons.It makes a nice change from all the broomstick manuals he’s been sent lately.

He doesn’t get started right away, not while he’s still wearing last night’s clothes. He gets a bit distracted, though, while he’s changing, because Iain had left love marks on his hips and he ends up examining them for a while, trying and failing to stop himself from smiling.

He puts Iain’s key in one of his desk drawers, where he doesn’t have to look at it. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

**

_Jupiter’s oceans are the largest and deepest of any planet’s. If one is performing an important water-related elemental spell, it may help with strength and accuracy if one performs it during the Jupiter Opposition._

It’s been four days already, but Sirius is still only on page 49 of the astronomy textbook. He keeps getting distracted, or pulled away - which is ironic, honestly, since translation is supposed to be his distraction. But on Monday, an emergency Order meeting had been called, where Dumbledore had broken the news that Caradoc had been murdered. Consequently, he’d spent most of Tuesday too drunk to work, putting record after record onto his turntable and trying very hard not to think. Then there had been the funeral on Wednesday, after which he’d spent the rest of the day as Padfoot, curled up on the couch and whining into a pillow. It wasn’t until this morning that he’d felt up to working.

Caradoc’s funeral was the third one he’s been to in the last year; he has a feeling he’ll be going to a lot more. And that’s just about the last thing he wants to think about, because every time he goes down that road, he starts imagining James’s funeral, and Remus’s, and Peter’s. It’s - he can’t deal with it. He looks into the future and all he sees is death and loneliness - and so instead he’s focusing far too intensely on the words in front of him on the page.

The key to Iain’s apartment is still safely tucked out of sight in one of his desk drawers. He’s trying not to think about that either.

_Human beings - Wizards and Muggles alike - are made of the remnants of stars! All of the material in our bodies comes from stardust that fell to Earth from supernovas, whether they happened millenia ago or just a few hundred years. The stardust floating through us directly connects us to the universe, and rebuilds our bodies over and over again in our lifetimes._

It’s a nice idea, he thinks absently as he types - to be the product of stardust and comets, instead of the unwanted byproduct of a loveless marriage. He is, however, far less worthy of the former.

He reaches the end of the chapter shortly, and has every intention of continuing to the next one, but the words are starting to blur together on the page. He looks out his window and blinks in surprise when he sees that it’s dark outside. No wonder he’s so tired all of a sudden - he hadn’t slept well the night before at all, and by the looks of it, it has to be at least 10 PM.

The best idea would probably be to get an early night for once - but instead he finds himself pulling open the drawer and staring down at the key inside. It’s embarrassing, really, that he’s so worked up about a _key_. It’s hard to feel ashamed with Iain, when he’s so ridiculously kind and understanding about everything. But it’s still there, the shame, always lingering in the corners of his brain, threatening to sweep back in in full force at the slightest provocation. And this - this _thing_ with Iain, unnamed and casual as it is, is easy to think of as temporary - a blip, an indiscretion, something he can move past easily if he ever comes to his senses. A key makes it less so. A key means that Iain wants something more - assuming, that is, that he meant anything by it all, that he didn’t just mean for Sirius to return it the next time he sees him.

The conclusion that Sirius has come to is that he should return the key either way. He can’t allow this to go any farther than it already has. If Iain is under the mistaken impression that Sirius is worth his time, it seems rather inevitable that he’ll snap out of it sooner or later. He deserves so much better - he’ll realize that at some point.

There’s also the fact that Sirius could be killed by Death Eaters any minute, so… yeah, better not to let Iain get too attached.

He sits there staring into the drawer for what feels like hours before he makes up his mind. Then he picks the key up, tucks it into his pocket, and heads for the door. It’s late, and a weekday, but he doesn’t think he can deal with having the key in his possession until the weekend.

Iain’s place is technically within walking distance, but it’s farther than Sirius wants to go - he’d probably chicken out halfway there if he walked. So he takes his bike instead, letting the roar of the engine and the rush of wind past his ears drown everything else out for a while. When he arrives, he parks just down the block and, after casting a quiet protection spell, makes his way hurriedly into Iain’s building and up to his floor. He can’t help but go over the possibilities in his head of what he can say to justify being here - _I was just in the neighbourhood_; or _I’m away this weekend and I didn’t want to leave without returning your keys_; or the truth - _I think I just wanted to see you_. But before he can settle on anything, he finds himself knocking, and then the door swings open and his mind goes blank.

Iain’s standing in front of him wearing nothing but his boxers and a baffled expression. “Sirius? What’s up?” he asks, opening the door a little wider - and giving Sirius a clear view into his apartment, where a young man with short brown hair is stretched out in Iain’s bed, looking decidedly confused and definitely naked.

“I-” Sirius chokes out past the pressure that’s suddenly constricting his throat. “Sorry, I - I just wanted to return your key - I didn’t mean to interrupt anything, I’m really -”

“It’s fine,” Iain interrupts with that easy half-smile that Sirius can never quite get out of his head. “No worries, Henry and I were just -”

“Here,” Sirius cuts him off, thrusting the key into his hand. “This is yours. I’ll - I’ll see you around.”

He turns away sharply and goes to stride away, trying his best to shove all the ugly things he’s feeling down, at least until he gets home to his booze and his bed. But he doesn’t get very far before Iain’s hand closes around his wrist, pulling him gently back towards him. “Hey,” he says, his voice soft and so effortlessly goddamn seductive. “Look at me.”

Sirius is helpless to resist. He turns back, making a futile attempt to keep his eyes off Iain’s face (because it’s all he can do to keep his current emotions in check without the added messiness of the hop-skip-jump that happens in his chest whenever he looks in Iain’s eyes). Iain cups his face with one hand and strokes his thumb over Sirius’s cheek, and he feels suddenly like he might cry.

“You don’t have to leave,” Iain murmurs, leaning in so their lips brush together. “You can stay, if you’d like.”

Everything in Sirius’s body wants to give in; he’s so close to just melting into Iain’s touch, pulling him down and kissing him properly. But his brain is still going completely haywire. He stands there frozen for a long, long moment before he, distantly, shakes his head.

“I have to go,” he manages. “I’ll… I’ll see you.”

But Iain doesn’t just let him go - instead, he presses the key into Sirius’s hand. (Hopefully he doesn’t notice that Sirius is shaking.) “You don’t have to give this back, though,” he says. “I meant for you to keep it.”

He should refuse; he knows he should refuse. Instead, he closes his fingers around the key.

“I’ll see you soon,” Iain says, and kisses his cheek. “I’m going to get back in there now.”

Sirius just nods jerkily in response. Iain steps back inside and closes the door, and he stands there silently for a second before he stumbles away.

**

He hadn’t slept well the previous night, but that night he doesn’t sleep at all.

Knowing he’s being unreasonable does nothing to stop the twisting sensation in his gut. He’s not Iain’s boyfriend; he’s not Iain’s anything. He’s just someone who shows up when he feels like it, takes what he needs and leaves again. It would be completely unfair of him to expect Iain not to see other people, to ask him to just… wait around for him, twiddling his thumbs. But when he’d seen that other man in Iain’s bed - _Henry_, he sneers into his whiskey - his insides had erupted into a maelstrom of jealousy and hurt and anger. It’s every ugly thing that he hates about himself, but he’s finding it very hard to dull the sharp edges. Even the whiskey isn’t making much headway.

He wants... he doesn’t know what he wants. He wants to be the one in Iain’s bed right now; he wants to wake up next to him every morning; he wants to never think about him ever again. Mostly he wants to stop thinking altogether, and feeling, because it’s all so fucking _horrible_ \- and because the longer he sits here dwelling, the more things start to fall into place.

The hurt, the jealousy, the little hop-skip-jump in his chest - all of it paints a picture that he really doesn’t like.

_You’re not in love_, he tells himself harshly. _You’re just drunk_. But he doesn’t quite manage to convince himself.

**

Iain is like a magnet; he draws Sirius closer and closer no matter how hard he tries to pull away. He has carefully avoided asking Iain about himself, just as he’s carefully avoided revealing much of his own. But he’s learned through osmosis. He knows that Iain takes his coffee with cream and sugar and his eggs over easy; that he likes The Who, and that he still talks to his mother. He sleeps on his front and he prefers beer over spirits and his voice carries the barest hint of an Irish accent, and Sirius does not want to fall in love with him, but it’s starting to seem like he might not have a choice.

The smart thing to do - the rational thing to do - would be to stay away. But Iain is like a magnet, and Sirius goes to his flat on Saturday evening.

“Did you lose your key already?” Iain asks when he answers the door - although the corners of his mouth are twitching up, so it doesn’t seem like he’s annoyed. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Sirius replies, and pushes him towards the bed.

**

At the Order meeting on Sunday morning, he and James get assigned to tail Rodolphus Lestrange, which elicits a grimace from each of them. Rodolphus is a nasty fellow, with a quick temper and a genuine penchant for violence - and now that he’s married into Sirius’s family, he’s probably picked up their particular loathing for Sirius. In short, they need to be even more cautious than usual.

Sirius can’t remember the last time he and James hung out outside of Order business. They see each other a lot, but it’s usually on furtive and tense reconnaissance missions. He almost wants to ask James to come over, or to grab a pint with him at the Three Broomsticks before their next stakeout. But then he remembers how many secrets he’s keeping these days, and he figures he’d better not. 

On Wednesday afternoon, Rodolphus is (according to Dumbledore’s sources) supposed to be meeting with an associate at a bar in Knockturn Alley. The two of them convene outside of Borgin & Burke’s ten minutes early and walk over to the bar in silence.

They find lookout spots in an alleyway across the street and settle in to wait - but 45 minutes later, there’s been no sign of Rodolphus and Sirius has pins and needles in his legs. He lets out a huff of frustration and reaches up to scrub his hands over his face; as he does so, he feels James settle down next to him.

“How have you been, Padfoot?” he asks, too casually, and Sirius feels a little stab of panic in his gut. His eyes snap up to James’s face, almost expecting to see some sort of judgement there - _what if he knows_ \- but instead he’s met with barely contained excitement. Somehow, he manages not to frown.

“Alright,” he says, as neutrally as he can. “Same as usual. You?”

“I’m good,” James responds, a huge grin spreading across his face. “Great, actually. I have news.”

“Oh yeah?” Sirius’s curiosity is definitely piqued, because he doesn’t think he’s seen James look so excited since... fuck, maybe since his and Lily’s wedding. “What’s up?”

“I honestly shouldn’t really be telling you this,” James admits, leaning in a little closer. “We just found out for sure this morning, and it’s still kind of a secret, but - I’m just so bloody excited.”

“What?” Sirius prods him fondly, as he’s starting to look all far-away and starry-eyed, and the suspense is sort of killing him.

James looks at him, and his grin seems as though it might rip right through his face. Just when Sirius is about to snap - shake him by the shoulders or something, get him to spit it out - when James blurts, “Lily’s pregnant.”

“What?!” Sirius yelps. “Prongs, that’s -”

_Brilliant_, he means to say, but the word gets caught in his throat. It’s - it is brilliant - James is clearly over the fucking moon about it - but… it’s just... 

First of all, there’s the war; he doesn’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to react with worry given the context. But second of all, selfishly and much less reasonably, it brings up all the ugly feelings he’s been pushing down since the wedding - that James is growing up and leaving him behind. What will he need Sirius for when he has a beautiful wife _and_ a new baby?

But… James looks so _happy,_, and that makes it easy to put all that aside, if just for the moment. He grins back at his best friend and laughs lightly. “That’s brilliant! I’m so happy for you!”

He throws his arms around him in an exuberant hug, but before James can hug him back, it becomes clear that his hug was too exuberant. The disillusionment charm he’d cast at the mouth of the alleyway had wavered with his concentration, and now it flickers and disappears.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” drawls a voice from behind them.

Both of them whip around, Sirius getting to his wand just a bit faster than James does. Rodolphus is standing there, smirking in a self-satisfied sort of way despite the two wands levelled at his face. He fingers his own wand, sticking out of his left sleeve, but doesn’t draw it.

“Rodolphus,” Sirius says coldly. “Doing some shopping? Have you run low on shrunken heads or something?”

“I hope you’re not going to try to pretend that you’re not here to spy on me,” Rodolphus shoots back. “You’ve done quite a sloppy job of hiding here, I’m almost embarrassed for you. Although I don’t expect much intelligence from a couple of blood traitors.”

Forget stardust; it’s hard to imagine Rodolphus being made of anything other than creeping, oozing evil. It practically rolls off of him, and it almost makes Sirius’s stomach turn to look him in the eyes. He does anyway, though, not wanting to show any sign of anything that could be taken as cowardice.

“Shove off,” he says. “Go do whatever Dark shit I’m sure you’re here to do.”

But Rodolphus doesn’t move; instead, he pulls his wand out of his sleeve and starts twirling it between his fingers. And then he says, ever so casually: “How’s Iain, Sirius?”

“Who’s Iain?” James asks in confusion behind him, but Sirius barely hears him over the sudden rush of blood in his ears. He stands there, frozen, as Rodolphus’s smirk spreads leisurely across his face.

“I hope you’ve found some way to keep him safe,” he says, a nauseating tone of mock-concern slipping into his voice. “It would just be such a shame if anything were to happen to him.”

“Who’s Iain?” James repeats, sharper this time. “Sirius, what’s going on?”

Sirius doesn’t answer. He crosses the alleyway in a few strides and, before Rodolphus can even react, he slams him up against the wall, his arm pressed to his throat.

“Shut the fuck up,” he snarls, his free arm going down to pin Rodolphus’s wand hand against the wall. “Shut the _fuck_ up. Don’t you dare talk about him.”

“You should be a lot more worried about the things I can do besides talk,” Rodolphus rasps out, somehow still smirking even as he struggles for air.

“I’m not going to let you get anywhere near him.” Sirius presses harder, watching as Rodolphus’s face turns red. “If you think I’m going to let you hurt him -”

“Sirius!” He’s yanked backwards, away from Rodolphus, and James steps in front of him, keeping his wand steadily pointed at the Death Eater as he splutters and rubs at his neck. “Fuck off, Lestrange,” he says darkly. “Before I do something I’ll regret.”

Rodolphus sneers at them, but slinks away, heading toward the pub - probably off to meet whoever his associate is. But they’ve blown that now anyway. For a moment, Sirius just stares after him, breathing heavily. He fists his fingers into his hair and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to calm down - and when that fails, he lets out a growl of frustration and storms out of the alleyway.

“Padfoot!” James calls after him. He can hear his footsteps behind him, but he doesn’t slow down. There’s no way he wants to have this conversation. Maybe - maybe James will just forget about it. Maybe he won’t ever have to fill him in -

Then the footsteps behind him speed up, and suddenly James is in front of him, grabbing his shoulders and bringing him to a halt. “Sirius,” he says sternly. “Who the fuck is Iain?”

“No one,” Sirius snaps back at him. “He’s nobody. Just forget about it, James, okay?”

James opens his mouth to protest, but Sirius doesn’t give him a chance. He pushes James off of him and, without saying another word, hurries away.

**

He’s at Iain’s flat within twenty minutes, having stopped briefly at home to grab the spare key and his bike (it’s conspicuous, but it’s fast, and he needs to act quickly while he knows Rodolphus is otherwise occupied). He’s never come over during the day before, and he’s desperately hoping that Iain won’t be home - that he can leave the key and a note, and lock the door behind him with his wand, maybe cast a protection spell or two. Unfortunately, the door doesn’t open into an empty flat. Iain is sitting in his armchair reading, and looks up in shock when Sirius walks into the room. For a moment, they just stare at each other, while Sirius tries to build up the willpower to do what needs to be done. This is going to be so much harder than he’d ever expected, and he has no idea how he can possibly explain - but this needs to be done.

“Sirius!” Iain sounds surprised, but not displeased. “I wasn’t expecting you -”

Every word he says is just making this harder. Sirius swallows, hard, and strides over to him. Wordlessly, he hands him the key, and watches as a shadow of hurt passes over Iain’s face.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, and somehow his voice doesn’t shake.

“Do what?” Iain frowns, reaching out his hand, which Sirius doesn’t take. “Sex? I thought - I thought we, I don’t know, got past that. Is something going on?”

“No - I mean, yeah, but -” He needs to get the _fuck_ out of here before he dissolves into pieces, but he can’t bring himself to just turn and walk out, not when Iain is looking at him like that. But - he doesn’t know what he can possibly say to make this alright, to cut Iain out without hurting him.

Perhaps he can give him the truth, or part of it.

“It’s not just sex,” he says in a rush. “Because I care about you, Iain -” (_I love you,_ he thinks, but doesn’t say) “- and I’m… I’m not a good person to be around.”

“So you’re a little fickle sometimes,” Iain says, trying and failing to give him a normal smile. “I’m coping fine so far.”

“It’s not that. It’s - listen, I can’t really explain everything, but I’m genuinely dangerous to be around, okay? There are a lot of bad people who really want to hurt me, and they’ll happily hurt you if they know they’ll hurt me in the process. Which, as it turns out, they do know. So - so you need to stay away from me, because I can’t stand it if you -”

He doesn’t get any further, because Iain stands up, pulls him into his arms, and kisses him hard on the mouth.

“Calm down,” he says, pulling back ever so slighty. “Whatever this is, we can figure it out. I know we can.”

“We can’t,” Sirius gasps, although he makes no move to push him away. “I can’t -”

“Yes we can,” Iain murmurs, and kisses him again.

And Sirius melts. It’s selfish, and wrong, but he melts. He knows Iain doesn’t know what he’s talking about, doesn’t understand the gravity of what Sirius is saying, but… he can’t bring himself to fight this battle, not right now. He’ll - he’ll figure something else out. He’ll cast all the protection spells he can, he’ll Confund Rodolphus, he’ll do whatever he needs to do. But if Iain wants him to stay, he’ll stay.

_Just one more night,_ he tells himself - although he knows it’s a lie - and he kisses Iain back.


End file.
